Hamas, an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (“Islamic Resistance Movement”), was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Yassin preached and performed charitable work in the West Bank and Gaza, both of which Israel occupied following the 1967 Six-Day War.
In the late 1980s, the Islamist militant group Hamas took over the Gaza Strip after defeating its rival political party, Fatah, in elections in 2006. The United States and European Union have declared Hamas a terrorist organisation due to its armed resistance against Israel, which has included suicide bombings and rocket attacks, injuring, wounding and taking the lives of many. Israel has declared war on Hamas following its surprise assault on the country’s south in 2023, the deadliest attack in Israeli history.
Hamas is "an Islamist militant movement and one of the Palestinian territories’ two major political parties." In the Gaza strip area, it has power and governs over 2 million people. In October 2023, Hamas launched a massive surprise attack on southern Israel, killing more than 1,400 people and taking dozens more as hostages. Israel has declared war on the group in response and indicated its military is planning for a long campaign to wipe it out entirely.
Although many countries have declared Hamas a terrorist organisation, some such as Iran provides it with material and financial support, and Turkey reportedly harbors some of its top leaders.
Hamas’s assault on southern Israel this year, which the group’s leaders have called “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm,” was extraordinary in its strategy, scale, and secrecy, analysts say. It began early in the morning on October 7, the Jewish Sabbath and an important Jewish holiday, with Hamas launching several thousand rockets into southern and central Israel, hitting cities as far north as Tel Aviv. Hamas militants also breached the heavily fortified Gaza border and infiltrated many southern Israeli towns and villages, killing some 1,400 people and wounding and kidnapping thousands more, including many small children, pregnant women, and others, leaving the families of these people distraught, as shown by many news channels across the world.
Israel has declared war on Hamas, mounting a campaign intended to eradicate the group and free around two hundred hostages. In the first three weeks of Israel’s offensive, its forces had killed more than eight thousand Palestinians in the enclave, around 40 percent of them children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry. More than three hundred Israeli troops have also been killed in the fighting, the Israeli health ministry said.
Surely, if this "war" continues, we could see the annihilation of the already deprived Gaza and even see increased terrorist acts and missions across the Middle Eastern land. However, many are afraid of this conflict attracting more and more attention from European superpowers, which may even lead to another World War. Should Hamas be stopped or should their motive be supported?
